The pharmacy profession has evolved from an era long ago, when most prescription drugs were compounded, to today, when the vast majority of prescribed medications are tablets, capsules, or prepackaged drugs made by pharmaceutical manufacturers under US Food and Drug Administration approval. To improve efficiency and accuracy, and to control costs, pharmacies have implemented various levels of technology and automation, which free up time for pharmacists to perform additional activities. In many pharmacy environments, this time is used to process more prescriptions, which is often the prudent and most profitable option.

The star ratings program from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is one of the systems used to measure quality in the outpatient setting. This program is a quality-rating system for Medicare Part D health plans, and includes quality metrics that range from foreign-language interpreter availability to patient medication adherence. Pharmacy claims data metrics are considered triple-weighted, because of their emphasis on these metrics in assessing health plan quality care. Often, third-party companies calculate the value of the metrics for a community pharmacy, despite the quality metrics designed by the Pharmacy Quality Alliance (PQA) for health plan assessment.